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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

I won't even mention all the plans for targeted ads in your car in your home using cameras and mics in you "smart" TV ... just read slashdot. The advertising companies are aggressive and malevolent and they try to make it seem like it's something necessary, a necessary method of funding, and that you should accept the ads shoved down your throat, all those flashing obnoxious pop-ups.

And what’s wrong with the ads apart of that that they’re usually obtrusive?

The ads are a form of the propaganda. The same with the most of TV programs, radio broadcasts, and press articles. The same with the politicians talk. The same with the priests talk. The same with your friends and family members talk. The same with your talk.

So I’m asking you once again but more generally: what’s wrong with the propaganda apart of that that it’s most of the time boring?

In my opinion propaganda is good. It’s everywhere so you have to learn to live with it. Use it to develop your critical thinking. Use it to build your unique mind.

Let me tell you something...

Last week a cashier in a store where I do shopping everyday said to me: “I have ask you some day which beers are the good ones because you buy always some strange beer”. I replied: “It’s simple. Buy those beers which aren’t advertised. Watch the ads!”.

Let me explain you something...

Company A advertises its beer and competes with the companies B and C which advertise their beers as well. So A, B, and C beers are cheap (because these companies compete on the market) and all these beers are advertised (because of that competition).

Here’s the price of a bottle of A, B, and C beers:

Code:

|-------------------------|-----|
ads ads ads ads ads ads beer

The other companies – X, Y, and Z – don’t advertise their beers. Moreover their beers are more expensive than the beers made by A, B, and C.

Now try to guess which “beer” has more beer inside and which “beer” is better beer?

And now decide what would you like to buy in a bottle of a beer: 80% of the ads (i.e. amusing conception, nice music, famous people, etc.) or just 100% of a beer?

My advices to you:

1. Watch the ads.

2. Think.

3. Think more.

Quote:

Originally Posted by H_TeXMeX_H

As for conspiracy theories and theorists, I know they are hated everywhere. They are just paranoid fools, right ? You might be right, but what do you risk if you are wrong ?

It’s very funny. Very very.

Either you parodied Pascal’s Wager knowingly or you repeated it in the other words unknowingly.

My answer to Pascal:

There’s no God and there’s no afterlife. I don’t intend to waste my life – the only life I have – on the considerations about God and afterlife (as well as about Pegasus, gnomes, Santa Claus, etc.).

My indirect answer to you:

I don’t intend to waste my life on the studies and the discussions about the conspiracy theories.

My direct answer to you:

I’m not wrong. Reading, thinking, and talking about the conspiracy theories is a huge waste of the time and the energy.

My request to you:

If you’d like to convince me a bit to the conspiracy theories select just one conspiracy theory – the one which is the best proven or at least the best justified – and show it here. (A humble link to “the best conspiracy theory website in the world” which discusses “the best proven or justified conspiracy theory” will be enough.)

***

(To read more about the beliefs and the gods see my post #46 on the fifth page of the Atheists thread in the Atheists social group.)

eyeofliberty,

Thanks.

Don’t live in a ghetto. Don’t escape from the whole world. There’s a lot of good content in Internet. Just try to find it. (Or maybe you do that instead of “hanging out in Linux forums” all the time?)

ukiuki,

Your head is full of the quotations (from Hermann Göring to Mahatma Gandhi). Try some day to think yourself. It’s a wonderful feeling.

to someone who thanked me,

Thanks for your thanks.

I can’t change the world – I can merely comment it. My goal is opposite to the Marxist-Leninist one because they had the ambition to change the world instead of merely comment it. (And they succeeded.) Their outlook was populist – my outlook is elitist. That causes all the difference.

The sad part of the above is that I can’t change the attitude of even a single person discussing here (with the possible exception of myself).

Yo, this is mood control
(Yo, ho)
Saying you might as well pay attention
(This is mood control)
We can't afford free speech
(Mood, mood, mood, someone's funkin' with the mood)

Mood control is designed to render funkable ideas
Brought to you by the makers of Mr. Prolong
Better known as Urge Overkill
The pimping of the pleasure principle

Oh, but we'll be pecking lightly
Like a woodpecker with a headache
'Cause it's cheaper to funk than it is to pay attention, you dig?
Huck-a-buck, A-Lo and behold
Someone's funking with the mood control

When you're taking every kind of pill
(Deprogram, program)
Nothing seems to ever cure your ill
(Peck me lightly, like a woodpecker with a headache)

When you're taking every kind of pill
(Funk the nonprofit organization)
Nothing seems to ever cure your ill
Where do you get your funk from?
(Where do you get that funk from?)

Hey, name that feeling
Would you trade your funk for what's behind the third door?
The big deal, heads I win, tail you lose
How do you spell relief?
Huck-a-buck, sucker

When you're taking every kind of pill
(Ho, bigger the headache the bigger the pill)
Nothing seems to ever cure your ill

Funkentelechy
(You deserve a break today so name that feeling)
Funkentelechy
(Would you trade your funk for what's behind the third door?)
Funkentelechy)
(The big deal, heads I win, tails you lose, I don't know)

...ukiuki,
Your head is full of the quotations (from Hermann Göring to Mahatma Gandhi). Try some day to think yourself. It’s a wonderful feeling...

I do think by myself otherwise I wouldn't be here talking about something important to people, there is absolutely nothing wrong about quotes, and we do learn a lot from those, specially when it come from wise people like Ghandi and if we don't listen or learn from who know a lot more than ourselves from who will we learn? If you don't want to listen the words of a just a guy like me because I'm just another guy, then listen to the wise ones like Ghandi(the quotes).

And by the way a lot of the adds and comercials in the media do contain subliminal messages, but it is up to you what you want to allow your mind to be fed of, and that is how the few dictate to the many, how to think, what to drink, what to eat, how to dress, etc etc.

Don’t live in a ghetto. Don’t escape from the whole world. There’s a lot of good content in Internet. Just try to find it. (Or maybe you do that instead of “hanging out in Linux forums” all the time?)

Haha, no, I don't live in a ghetto, or escape from the whole world. And Linux is just one of many hobbies for me, including archery, backpacking, herbalism, primitive skills, homebrewing, alternative energy, bicycling, and kayaking. I just don't have much tolerance for what most people consider entertainment, the mainstream media, consumerism, and such.

When I read this forum I prefer rather to read the words written by the guy like you. When I’ll decide to read the words written or spoken by Hermann Göring or Mahatma Gandhi I’ll start to read the Göring’s or Gandhi’s works or the works about Göring or Gandhi – which didn’t happen to me so far and I doubt it’ll happen to me whenever.

***

It’s very dangerous thing those subliminal messages! A horrifying, terrifying, frightening, scaring, dreadful, terrible thing. The biggest and the wealthiest beer companies in my country using the subliminal messages managed to discourage me to drink their beers at all. The producers of the food and the drinks managed to discourage me to eat and drink their products. The producers of the clothes and the shoes managed to discourage me to wear their products. The producers of books, movies, and music managed to discourage me to read, watch, and listen their products. The same with the producers of the software and possibly some other manufacturers.

On the other hand I buy advertised laptops, cameras, hi-fi devices, mobile phones, and the other stuff. But I buy all of that not because the subliminal messages that come from their producers convinced me to buy that but because after my extensive investigations I decided that the best gears for me and now are: ThinkPad laptops, Fujifilm cameras, Marantz hi-fi devices, Nokia mobile phones, etc.

So I’m not a robot. I’m a human being. Ads don’t tell me what I have to do – they don’t tell me either what I have not to do. I’m not controlled by ads. I’m not controlled by any form of the propaganda. I’m controlled by my own mind.

***

Are you a robot, ukiuki?

(Assuming that you aren’t a robot: why you work as a robot and why you’re afraid of someone who allegedly controls you?)

((Assuming that someone actually controls you: why you allow him or her, or them to do that?))

to all the moderators and the other staff,

Why the forum engine changed the uppercase letters in the title of the present post to lowercase ones?

Do you think that the users of that forum are so dumb that they don’t know when they should use the uppercase letters?

My main opponents in that thread are H_TeXMeX_H and ukiuki. I wonder whether H_TeXMeX_H will present here some intelligible, reasonable, and coherent “conspiracy theory”:

Quote:

If you’d like to convince me a bit to the conspiracy theories select just one conspiracy theory – the one which is the best proven or at least the best justified – and show it here. (A humble link to “the best conspiracy theory website in the world” which discusses “the best proven or justified conspiracy theory” will be enough.)

Personally I doubt that any “conspiracy theory” is intelligible, reasonable, or coherent.

I’m sad now because I like H_TeXMeX_H very much.

I asked him about some intelligible, reasonable, and coherent “conspiracy theory”. Just one. In my opinion such a theory doesn’t exist. I’m pretty sure that there’s no such a thing as a “conspiracy theory”. There are some collections of the ideas concerning conspiracy (so called “conspiracy bullshit”) but none of them is a “theory”. The theory is something more than the collection of the statements freely put together.

I think it’s impossible to find some “conspiracy theory” because all those “theories” aren’t theories at all. So I suppose that H_TeXMeX_H waits now in a hideout until we’ll forgot the “conspiracy theories” thing.

***

Dear H_TeXMeX_H,

Don’t hide yourself from the other people. Come back to us! It’s only a free flow of the ideas. It’s just some minor thread in some insignificant forum dedicated to some marginal operating system. Think about the whole Universe that exists about 13.7 billion years. What means that thread in the face of the Universe?

Some of the ideas presented here are shitty but the other ones are great.

That’s not the end of the world when someone believes in the mentioned shitty ideas. Some of my friends believe in such a shit as astrology. I tried to convert them in the past. Some of them were offended by my arguments and they stopped to contact with me for a while. After a few months they restored the contacts again.

Who is really afraid here? You do believe in whatever you want to believe, that is up to you.

You’re frightened at least by the conspiracy theories and by the subliminal messages. Just read your own posts from the present thread. I’m astonished that you have such a weak memory. How old are you? More than 100? My best wishes!

Yes. I believe whatever I want to believe. The same with you. That doesn’t change the fact that some beliefs are worthless while some other ones are valuable. Just compare two ideas: “God” and “science”. To believe in God is worthless. To believe in the science is valuable.

Are you trying to argue with me? Yes? Indeed? Best wishes once again! Thanks to your collaboration with me it can be the funniest thread in the entire LinuxQuestions.org ever.

***

It’s not enough to repeat once again the “wisdom” that you learned before in a dispute with me to win the contest. If you’d like to win it you should invent some new arguments.

Some of you linked your statements with some particular group of the people – the Jews (unSpawn noticed that pretty soon). Well, the orthodox Jews are very funny people. Some of them wear strange hats and clothes (shtreimels and caftans), have strange whiskers (payos), and read strange books (Torah).

In my opinion the two stupidest nations in the world are: Jews (mostly from Israel) and Poles (mostly from Poland). The first invented the stupid idea of the “chosen people” and the latter invented the stupid idea of Poland as a “Christ of Europe”. Both think that there’s something special in their nations. I’m sorry. It isn’t. Both Jews and Poles are roughly the same as any other nation.

I’d like to apologize you if your nation is more stupid than Jews and Poles. I simply don’t know all the nations and I rely on my limited knowledge. If your nation is stupidest even than the Jews and the Poles feel free to inform us about that here.

Dear w1k0, I'm not your opponent, neither I think you are mine.
I'm not afraid of any of that you have mentioned, I'm just saying: "those things may contain bad things that do harm peoples minds, like the propaganda or comercials or adds if you like." If you want to believe that, good for you, if you don't it is totally up to you. Anyway do your own research about any of this things if you want, find out for yourself, you don't have to take anyone word as last resort.

No, in fact you linked to a good old fashioned anti-semitic rant and then started quoting the matrix.

As for "conspiracy theories" and "conspiracy theorists", it's a label, I dislike labels. It's all to easy to point the finger and say "conspiracy theorist!" and just dismiss someone who may actually have something relevant to say. You however do not seem to have anything at all relevant to say.